1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates broadly to communication systems. More particularly, this invention relates to communications systems that provide for peer-to-peer voice communication.
2. State of the Art
In modern communication systems, when a call is made to a called party, a ring tone is played at the called party's telephony device in order to announce the incoming call to the called party. In the case of a traditional wire line telephone, the ring tone is played in response to a 90-volt 20-hertz AC wave generated by the central office switch that is connected to the called party's telephony device. In the case of a wireless communication system, the ring tone is typically generated on the called party's mobile handset in response to a call connection request communicated thereto from a switching center or the like. Mobile handsets typically also allow for a vibrating alert to announce incoming calls. The vibrating alert is especially useful in noisy environments, in places where ring tone noise would be disturbing, and for the hearing impaired.
Newer wireless mobile handsets allow the user to select the ring tone from a collection of ring tones, and also to select a ring tone for each user listed in the handset's phone book. When the handset receives a call connection request from a user listed in the handset's phone book, the ring tone associated with the user is played to announce the incoming call. Newer mobile handsets can also use short pieces of music as ring tones, and the sale of these ring tones has become a major sector of the mobile music industry.
Early mobile handsets had the ability to play only monophonic ring tones, which are short tunes played with simple tones. These early phones also had the ability to have ring tones programmed into them using an internal ring tone composer. Various formats were developed to enable ring tones to be sent via SMS text, for example RTTTL encoding.
Modern mobile handsets are now able to play more complex polyphonic ring tones. Polyphonic means that multiple notes can be played at the same time using instrument sounds such as guitar, drums, electronic piano, etc. Polyphonic ring tones are typically pieces of recorded music or other sounds contained in a conventional audio file (e.g., AAC, MP3, WMA, WAV, QCP, or AMR format) and played by suitable software applications that execute on the mobile handset. Polyphonic ring tones can also be based upon midi sequences. Many polyphonic capable handsets are able to play standard midi files, others play sp-midi files. The sp-midi file encodes a scalable polyphonic ring tone. The number of available channels that can be concurrently played on the handset dictates the notes played by the handset in rendering the sp-midi file. More particularly, an older polyphonic capable handset may play 4 notes at once, while a newer handset may be capable of rendering 128 notes at once.
Ring tones have proven a popular method of personalizing mobile handsets. In response to this demand, wireless carriers and other content providers have developed businesses that generate significant revenue resulting from the distribution of ring tones to mobile handset users. However, personalization of the ring tones played on mobile handset is controlled exclusively by the user of the handset. This limits the amount of personalization that can be achieved as part of the voice call process and thus limits potential revenues that could be derived by additional personalization of the voice call process.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2006/0026277 to Sutcliffe describes a system and method for “pushing” a caller-defined multimedia announcement or alert within the call set-up process. It is possible for the called party to hear or see the caller-defined multimedia announcement before answering the incoming call. The caller-defined multimedia content is transferred during call set-up and replaces standard ring tones on the recipient's mobile handset. This process allows for additional personalization of the voice call process. However, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2006/0026277 fails to address many important issues that arise in this process, including but not limited to user control and management of the multimedia announcement communication process on a system wide basis and on a user by user basis, and access control over the multimedia content transferred to the recipient's mobile handset.
Thus, there remains a need in the art for methods, systems and services based thereon for peer-to-peer voice call communication that allow for additional personalization of the voice call process while also providing user control and management of the multimedia announcement communication process on a system wide basis and on a user by user basis, and access control over the multimedia content transferred to the recipient's mobile handset.